


The Last Illumination

by kaiotaleftamou



Category: 19th Century CE RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:00:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaiotaleftamou/pseuds/kaiotaleftamou
Summary: Nikos is an engineer who finds out that a very intriguing person is recruited on the construction site he is working at.  As he sets out to find more about the man, he discovers that he is a well-known poet, one with some skeletons in his closet too. Determined to learn the truth, he befriends the man, only to find himself exposed to a story he was not prepared for. As the narration starts he realizes that the truth may sometimes better remain concealed.
Relationships: Arthur Rimbaud/Paul Verlaine
Kudos: 5





	1. The Story Told Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Absolutely poorly researched...
> 
> I wanted to write something about them for quite a long time after I read their life stories. Nikos is an original character I created just because I wanted to have a third voice in the story, giving an opinion on things and maybe he can shine a different light on the whole story as Arthur and Paul reflect on what happened.
> 
> I am warning you all:  
> 1\. English is not my native language you may see mistakes, serious ones.  
> 2\. I have not made thorough research, so some details may be clashing, please be merciful!
> 
> Our story begins a few years after A Season in Hell is published where Arthur has abandoned literature and finds work in Cyprus.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where a Cypriot engineer discovers a quite famous person among his employees

I had to do it.  


Ever since I started working at the construction site, it always appeared, a thought dancing in the back of my head like a pervasive fly. Could it be just luck? Could it be just someone with the advantage, or maybe the opposite of that, someone sharing the same name as him? Could sharing such a name be something beneficial to a person unknown and most probably unnoticed by now?  


I had to ask.  


I kept seeing this name on papers passing from my office, sitting on my desk, getting signed by me and the accountant and Ι thought, maybe, it's a common surname, maybe the family is extended and estranged, and maybe, this person won't even know who I am talking about.  


I signed something again this morning. The name was there, over all of them, sitting nonchalantly ατ the top of the page. Αll payrolls underneath it looked like tiny dots to me. I was stuck on the first name of the first page.  


Was it him?  


I have seen his face in literary magazines and papers, praising a talent that had disappeared from the public eye a little while ago-- not so long that could justify them forgetting him, just enough that they had started missing him, wondering where he was and why this absence could not be explained by some mundane human reason like facing an ailment or maybe, simply gathering strength to come back.It was the face of a young man, almost a boy. He stared absentmindedly outside the frame. He looked bored, mean and terrible, a difficult child that has already outgrown and hated you, even if he has never met you in the first place.  


I had read the articles written about him, praising his rare talent, acknowledging in his work a certain kind of revolution to their poetry up to this point. I took their word for it. I was not a big fan of poetry. I preferred nature and architecture; more constructed and dense things than the manifestations of words. Reading those magazines though was a good exercise for me. Μy skills in French needed work and my English was even worse, the latter being one of the reasons we needed interpreters in the first place. Well, my Greek was perfect-- so I had that to go on with my life.  
Spyroula had insisted that I buy foreign print whenever I could find it – to exercise the language; when we were in town or when we had enough money to ask some of her relatives to send us something. We got our news this way, and information about the current trends, and political issues. She insisted on going through recipes whenever she could find them. I, for that matter, was not that much into any of the above, not as much as her anyway. But my wife had a way of making you like some of the things she did.  


I liked reading stories, and literary magazines were all that. Seeing the difference in variations of writing had opened up my mind. The surfacing of that kind of poetry had caught my eye – his kind of poetry. It was liberated from the mandatory form of the rhyming verse, the verse that was meant to be recited rhythmically, to be sung. It was a different kind of thought, a much more direct, more aggressive speech, which would pull you in and up, rile you up perfectly so you would feel excited and adventurous; feelings that I had missed since growing up and starting my studies and work.  


It stayed with me in a different way than some traditional songs would do. Such songs would get stuck in my head for long but had no real power over me, apart from their repetitive nature, which made them easy to learn and remember and recall when necessary and nothing else.  


I had developed a sort of fondness for this weird, obscure artist, more like a child with big ideas than an artist at that time. I had secretly enjoyed coming across poems of his and reading the analysis; if, somehow, I understood it. The scholars attempted their kind of interpretations of the meanings of his poems, however, he seemed to be very far from that, aloof, already over and done with it, hiding somewhere in the world avoiding the light they desperately tried to shed on him.  


Hiding here?  


When we first started working on this, we were just a handful of people, just me and the accountant and some workers. Now the company is growing big. After the two works we have done in the last couple of months, we had to hire workers, builders, and carriers. Many of the workers came from regions of Africa, so partners told me that we needed someone who knew English and French and could do some supervising on the units. When my associate told me they had hired a little Frenchy, I did not expect anything out of the usual. I expected nothing, at least not that.  


I toyed with the question all day long, it danced around my thoughts whenever I took a break. How could he decide to work here? Who was he, among all of these people, dozens of people working on the site, hundreds of workers?  


What would I tell him if I met him; about art? Poetry? Did I really know anything about these? I did not. I suspected that someone who decides to work at a construction site does not want to talk about poetry.  


For weeks I remained inactive, focusing on my work. It had to be completed before we moved on to the second construction on the mountain top. The plan was big, our time short. 

As the days passed I caught myself examining faces more often than I used to. I glanced up every time a group of workers passed in front of me, looking at them, examining their faces, their accent in French. I spent more time examining the papers, trying to find his name and being relieved whenever I saw it, still here, working right under my nose.  
My associate noticed the change. When he asked me, what was wrong, why did I look around like I had lost something, I preferred not to answer. I thought he would find my slight obsession ridiculous and even scary; Well, I would have been scared if someone was looking for me so oddly. I was mildly anxious every day I went to work, every time I went to talk to the workers, that I would recognize this face among them. But it did not happen at work. 

It was a Friday night, my work done. We decided to follow some of the Englishmen, who had come to inspect the work- they were pleased with it- to a tavern in the village some kilometers away from the site, just to see if we could find some food which was not the bland thing the construction site cook served. I thought their courtesy of buying us the meal was solely dependent on the fact that they were pleased with our job. The word was that the English did not appreciate us Cypriots very much.  
Sitting at the table with them, I don’t contribute much to the conversation. I don’t have much to say and I refrain from revealing details on my opinions, especially in the company of the people who are paying for the construction that gives me my job. I look around at the people eating in the tavern, talking loudly in their rhythmical Cypriot language. On the other side of the hall, a man is sitting on the table beside the window, drinking alone, staring at the darkness outside. Dark blond hair, worn shoes -he looks familiar to me. My associate asks what am I staring at. I turn his attention to the man, discreetly.  


"He's one of our own, a little weird," he explains. He turns to the Englishman near him as to include him in the conversation I did not ask other people to join in the first place. "He's the Frenchy we hired a couple of weeks ago. Prefers to eat alone than with the others, like he's too good for any of them," he says and the Englishman says nothing. He agrees gently, as all of them do when they want to leave the conversation.  


"He is," I say. They do not hear me and I am glad I do not have to repeat it.  


I continue staring. He does not seem to notice me, he is way too far into his thoughts. Outside the window, darkness is covering the land, the valley, and the sea- that is visible just ahead of us, below the rolling hills. Boats with little lights on are scouring the shallow waters on the beach for shrimps, the same kind of shrimps that are in our plates right now.

I had to go. Not doing it would have me regretting it for the rest of my life. I get up, walk over to his table.  


I am visibly nervous.  


He doesn't turn around, not until I am very close to him, he turns and looks at me with the same face. I 've seen repeated all over his pictures, bored yet defiant.  


"It's you isn't it?" I asked. "Arthur Rimbaud."  


He looked at me as if even my breathing was a nuisance to him.  


"Sit," he ordered and I obeyed. I sat on the bench on the opposite side of the table.  


He is smoking from a long wooden pipe, something more fitting to the image of an old sailor. In his glass, the remnants of his drink are glinting in the low light of the lamps; it smells strong and starchy. Some hints of foam are evaporating from the edge of his blonde mustache. It was a beer and now he is having something else.  


"Qu'est-ce que tu veux?" he speaks, abruptly turning to French, _what do you want; _I struggle for a little while to find the phrase I want to use.  
__

__"I want to ask you something," I say eventually, mustering what French I can remember. It is decided, mentally, wordlessly, that this conversation is to be continued in French.  
_ _

__"No, I will never write again," he says. He inhales some smoke and releases it, leaving it to encircle his mouth – a devilish mouth, with a thin tongue and sharp teeth chipped on the edges like a street rat. He looks less than a writer and poet and more like a working-class British. If I did not know him, I would have never stopped by.  
_ _

__"I have heard a lot about you," I said.  
_ _

__"They say a lot," he responded. "I don't believe them," he adds, while pouring more drink into his dirty glass, he has purchased the whole bottle.  
_ _

__"I do," I said again.  
He looks at me, giving me a hard stare, his eyes are made of blue ice.  
_ _

__"Everything you have been told is wrong," he says.  
_ _

__I realize there is no way I am getting any word out of him, he is locked, better than a vault in a Swiss bank. I stare at his hand touching the bottle he just put on the side of the table. Nails cut deeply, bitten at the edges. On his wrist, a scar begins just below the base of the palm to disappear inside the sleeve of his shirt. He drinks a cheap brand of whiskey- it's an English thing that we have adopted over the years. He looks determined to devour all of that shoddy liquid tonight.  
_ _

__I stand my ground, I am after all the engineer here, the lead is rightfully mine. I get up, take my hat.  
_ _

__"I am expecting you at the site tomorrow morning. Do not be late."  
_ _

__"You can not work without me," he says looking at his glass, now filled up with whiskey, way more than the indicated portion. He keeps on drinking as I am turning away to leave. I say goodnight to my companions and head home for the night.  
_ _

__He knows we need him, he is sure about it. But I suspect he needs us too.  
_ _

__I arrive home late, as I had to walk back to the town. The caring Englishmen may have paid for the dinner, but they did not want to go home yet. They think I am probably way too absorbed by my work, which is a good thing for my future in the business.  
Spyroula was waiting for me, barefoot and with a shawl covering her shoulders. On this island, summers can get hot and nights can be cold after a hot day. She asks where I have been and I answer truthfully.  
_ _

__"We may have someone famous on the site," I say as we are heading to bed for the night. She asks who it is in a mildly interested tone. She used to be more excited about anything new, but for the last couple of months, all of her attention goes to the baby she is expecting. She is a devoted mother.  
_ _

__"Is it, someone, we know?" she asks. Her flowing nightgown pools on her knees, her legs folded under her on the bed. She waits for me to get undressed.  
_ _

__"He's kind of known in his country," I said. "I know him from those magazines you asked for."  
_ _

__"They are not any good," she says. "They have nothing worthy of your time. I won't ask for anymore."  
_ _

__"No, just for the French ones," I said. They were better in quality. "As long as your uncle doesn't go out of his way to do that."  
_ _

__"It's not," she reassures me and I appreciate it when she does that. "He already buys them, he reads a lot anyway."  
_ _

__"Then he 'll be glad to hear that I met this person today. He's a writer," I say as I get into bed. She lies next to me, our soon-to-be child between us, inside her belly.  
_ _

__"What kind of writer?" she asks.  
_ _

__"A good one, they say," I answer. A writer who doesn't write and works at a construction site. "When is your cousin coming back? Tomorrow?" I ask. I had an idea of how I could make Mr. Rimbaud answer at least one of my questions.  
_ _

__"On Wednesday I think. Why?"  
_ _

__"I want to send him a telegram," I said.  
_ _

__"Fine by me," she says. "Just don't ask him to bring anything." Her eyelids closed, she is already half asleep.  
I had to concur, although that was exactly my plan._ _

____

____

I woke up the next day way too early. I left her sleeping and hurried for the town post office, where the employee was surprised to see me so early;. He asked me if I was alright and I said I was.  


Was I? I did not stay to doubt it.  


I hurried up the hill. Along the way, I hoped that my wife's cousin would find the items I asked for and that the telegram would reach him on time. I hoped; while wondering if I had set enough money aside to pay for the expenses of this particular order.  


Construction works do not have weekends off like the rest of the world. I am expecting him to appear, he has to supervise the team he is serving as an interpreter for, he has to translate and give the instructions. I am already doing that for the past couple of hours. He appears on the dirt road, climbing up the hill with visible strain. There are probably already people looking for him somewhere on the site. As he approaches he looks disheveled, he is also slightly unshaved. The night with the bottle must have cost him some of his well being this morning.  


He sees me looking down at him.  


"Bonjour, boss," he says, a mixed greeting. Boss is how the workers called us, in English, and Greek "afentiko". I sense some irony behind it. He wants to be the same as them, but at the same time he does not think he belongs there, he knows he is above them, above all of that. His voice slow and dragging, a young one who has just woke up. "I was caught in a bear trap," he says. I admire the imaginative lie. I let him walk further, without any response.  


I tend to notice him a lot more around the site now that I know his face. For me keeping him in the company is the ideal scenario, just as long as it takes for my order to arrive. Spyroula's cousin left France on Wednesday exactly as planned. He took extra care of notifying me in a separate telegram that he had managed to find what I was asking for. For the first time in my life, I found myself waiting in agony like a sailor's wife, looking towards the sea every time I thought I heard that a ship was coming.  


After I spent many days of waiting, he finally arrived. I insisted that we invite him to our house and let Spyroula believe that I wanted to see him after I had missed him very much; which I did, but I wanted my things first.  


"Your order had me eating sandwiches for days," he said, after all the normal greetings. I apologized and gave him the money.  


"That solves the mystery of why you wanted him to return so badly," Spyroula said. "What did you ask for?"  


It was inside the package, I opened it up and looked. A green bottle, a well-known brand of spirit. Apart from that, there was the book.  


"How much did it cost?"  


"The drink was more expensive than that," he said, pointing at the little book. "I spent some time trying to find it though, seems like there are only a few copies out now." he added.  


"There are some who say he is going to be the next big thing there," I said.  


The cousin stayed for lunch. After that, Spyroula went to rest for the baby's sake, it had been quite a long day for her.  


"Who is this package for?" asked the cousin. "Gift to someone's wife?"  


"Only you do such things," I said. He was the type of person who would go for someone's wife, who would go for anyone's female companion, friend or relative, he did not make distinctions. I was glad he was Spyroula's cousin, at least a degree of consanguinity would keep him away from my wife.  


"I am trying to make friends with someone. This is a bait." I explained.  


"To do what?" he asked, doubtful.  


"I 'll decide later."

I went to the site the next day, with the bottle wrapped carefully under my arm and the book in my bag. I had started to read this the night before and it kept me awake, thinking and wondering at things that had never crossed my mind before.  


I wanted to thank him for that in some way.  


I stopped one of the Cypriot workers and asked him where the Frenchy was. He showed me the lower sector of the construction. I slid down the dirt road. He was there, upon a heap of dirt, taking notes.  


"You said you were never going to write again," I said.  


He half-turned his face toward me. "You want reports of their progress don't you?" he said. "If it was on me, I would have never touched a pencil in my life. You are making me do this. So I expect a little lenience from you, boss."  


"I am not here as your boss now," I said, remembering the bottle which was getting heavier under my arm. "I saw you drinking that awful thing the other night and I thought maybe you wanted some of this," I said presenting the wrapped bottle. "I have a lot of this at home." I lied blatantly, anyone who knew me would know that this was far from the truth. "I thought you may want something from your country."  


He stepped down with one foot on the earth, took the bottle from me. He unwrapped it, his fingers ran on the engraved letters, tracing the word "Absinth" like a blind man trying to figure out the details of something in the darkness.  


"The ancient Greeks and Romans put devotions at the feet of the statues of their Gods," he said. "What is it that you want to ask for?" he said, the bottle hanging at his side, fully visible in the bright sunny morning. "I am too old for these kinds of transactions with married men."  


"It is not that!" I said quickly. The thought of gaining a reputation for requesting dirty things from workers in exchange for French alcoholic drinks made me shiver. "I want to ask you something," I repeated the same thing I had said in the tavern.  


"Ask ahead," he said. "I will pay the price for the bottle."  


I found myself at a loss for words. What do you ask someone after this? What should I ask him? Did I even have a question to pose, a real question, apart from the big why? Why did you leave art? Why did you come here?  


"Silence," he commented. "I am starting to think that this was the question after all." The mark on his wrist is pale and striking against his tanned skin, ever-present.  


"How did you get the scar?" I asked. He glances at it.  


"Hunting," he says. "I was hunting with a friend and he shot me by accident."  


I read the lie in his face, it was an answer, so undefined that I understood I had been played. He would not answer anything.  


"Guns are dangerous," I said. "You were lucky."  


He nodded, I could not distinguish if he was mocking me for stating the obvious or agreeing with me. I left him out there, with the expensive bottle I had just lost, and went back to work.


	2. The truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Nikos convinces Arthur to talk using means on mediocre severity.

Any normal person would have stopped after this, claiming that it was too difficult, that it was not worthy of their time and energy, or worse, that they did not care anymore. But I was not this kind of person, not after reading this book. I started noticing unusual shapes and forms on the items around me, the people around me, and their ideas. I spent time putting them under the magnifying glass of the new school of thought I had just encountered.  
I finished the book in one night, in a feverish rush, as to me, it was a small wonder of this world. It had so few pages and yet, it left me with so much to think about.  
I had to find more. I wrote to Spyroula's uncle, I asked him about this new person and how I would find more works of his?  
I was still noticing him wherever he went on the site, keeping him under my eye. I was sure now that he too had his attention turned on me, ever since that night. He seemed to be watching me too trying to read my intention, what did I want to achieve by following him?  
I tried to be calm about it. Surely, none of this was ever going to attract the attention of the Englishmen, even if they visited the site regularly to see how the work proceeded. Both of us, I noticed, avoided them; probably for different reasons each.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived for me. Uncle had done his research I presumed, I opened the letter in a hurry, although when I came to the contents I was in for a big disappointment. There was nothing, at least not what I expected to receive. I read the letter. 

_"I have asked the people I know about it. It seems like this young fellow has abandoned literature for good. There are only a few poems out that are written by him and this book you have already told me about. There is not much else apart from stories and rumours, which I can tell you that some people spread because putting others down makes them stand taller. The man is talented no doubt about that, which makes some people nervous, they are threatened, that they are losing their portion in the market and the limelight. The same applies to every field. I will give you some advice if you are to take these stories for granted and that is the simple one doctors give their patients. Seek a second opinion."_

__

__

I turned the page both excited and scared. All of this introduction had led me to believe that the words following would change my perception for the man and not for the best. 

_"He was never renowned- he only lasted two to three years before abandoning writing completely. They say he was a stellar student though, but nobody I asked had anything good to say about him, character-wise; all I ever heard is about alcohol and knives and narcotics and bad people around him. He is highly undesirable from the local government, he has committed various actions that are considered to be radical and for inciting local turnouts. He is an outspoken communist among other things. There is also a rumor that he maintained some kind of relationship with his mentor, the poet Paul Verlaine. They say he left his wife for this youngster, it was quite a shock. That poor woman, I can not imagine the reaction of the family after that. That man, Verlaine, was an unstable character himself, some even say that he tried to shoot him once or twice."_

__"Hunting with a friend..." I thought. I folded the letter and hid it in my inside pocket. Probably the best place to seek a second opinion, as uncle had advised, was at the root of all things. It seems that man had some skeletons in his closet after all._ _

__I headed up to the site the next day, the letter in my pocket still. There was no sight of him. The workers were all frustrated, working faster than usual. I went to my associate's office. He was there examining his papers, his head bowed so low, his chin and neck looked like one thing._ _

__“The English said we have to complete the work before the end of August. Otherwise, they will take it from us and give it to people they know.”_ _

__“What is the rush?” I asked.”We have already agreed to a timeline and work.”_ _

__“Political decisions I imagine,” he said. “Anyway, I told everyone to double their speed.”_ _

__“I suppose I have to do that too,” I said. I did not like this decision, neither did I appreciate this last minute notice with this coercive tone. Although, it was giving me a reason to go talk to Frenchy once again.__

__I went down the dirt road at lunchtime. It was obvious what I wanted to do since the workers would have surely got the directions by now. I found them there, in the dirt, sitting on the ground, eating the site cooks food with their hands. All dirty and sweaty, in workers' uniforms and the same worn shoes he had on, the same dirt he had on his blonde hair. There was a finer, outlandish quality in his movements, one who has seen enough workers in his life, could see that he was not exactly one; he had learned to pretend to be tough, he had learned how to act, the way other people learned to play the piano. But every once in a while a small movement, the way he cut the bread, the way he looked over their heads and towards the sea, set him apart._ _

__He saw me coming. He stood up and climbed towards me, traces of former agility appearing in his movements, something long disappeared by now, he probably already had some years of substance abuse on his back._ _

__“Don’t bother repeating, the other man told me already.” he cut me off, as soon as I opened my mouth to speak. “The workers will eat their lunch and then we ‘ll continue,” he said, with the familiar icy stare._ _

__I did not dare say a word. He climbed back down the dirt road, sure that he had done whatever it was he wanted to do. I did not know if I was taken aback by this ferocity of words, the no negotiation type of interaction, or maybe I was letting the rumors get the best of me. A man hanging out with thugs and addicts and radicals was probably unstable and dangerous to me. Was he threatening or was it just the image that I had created in my head for him?_ _

__The tone of our interaction prevented me from getting any word from him. I waited for the evening when we could all go home. Walking down the hill I thought that I would never be able to do it ever again. I represented something he probably did not want to have interactions with. I saw him climbing the hill across from me, our eyes crossed just for some moments before he continued along the hillside. I turned around and watched him walk away.__

__“Was this friend of yours named Paul Verlaine?” I shouted._ _

__He stopped dead on his tracks. He turned and walked towards me so quickly I was afraid he would push me off the cliff and down on the rocky ground._ _

__“What do you want? Why are you asking me all of these questions?”_ _

__“I want to know what kind of person you are.”_ _

__“If you want to understand me, read those stupid poems. Pretend that I am dead as I should have been in Brussels! Leave me be!” he yelled._ _

__“Because I admire you as a person,” I said, not stopping to think if it sounded hollow and silly. “I really do!” I added. “I admire the way you think.”_ _

__He stopped. He thought about it, for a little while._ _

__“Everybody sees what they want to see in someone,” he said. “I will be at the village tonight,” he added. “If you want to eat something with me, come to that place we know.”_ _

__He did not say anything about time, so I did my best to guess. I sat on the tavern for two whole hours before he showed up, still dirty and bruised from the day’s work. He sat and asked me for tobacco in a slightly rude way._ _

__“Are you a policeman?” he asked immediately after lighting his pipe._ _

__“I am not and never was,” I said. Neither a communist, I wanted to add but I knew better._ _

__“Then why all these questions?” he asked. “If you want to find out where he is, I do not know and I do not care!” he added, his voice cracking ever so slightly._ _

__“Where is who?” I said, even though I did suspect._ _

__“Who indeed,” he said sarcastically. “You just name-dropped a certain man out on the site, do you expect me to believe it was an accident?”_ _

__I realized I had been cornered. I decided to tell him that I had spent the last month asking about his work._ _

__“I have heard some stories told about you and him,” I said._ _

__He sneered. “Filthy Parisians would not let me die even if I asked them to,” he said. He inhaled smoke. “What do they say now? I suppose that I am an infernal beast meant to steal their fathers, sons, and husbands, shit on their graves and renounce their church?”_ _

__“No,” I said. “Not that I know of. But they do say you are a knife bearing radical eager to make yourself a working-class hero.”_ _

__“I admire that critique,” he said. “And what about you?” he added, leaning forward. “Are you a radical yourself? No, I suppose not.”_ _

__“I am a fan of your work.”_ _

__“I don’t have fans.”_ _

__“You do now,” I said. “I have read the poems and the book.” He looked at me up and down, still trying to figure me out – was I a drunk? A lunatic?_ _

__“What is your name?”_ _

__“I’m Nikos,” I said. “I suppose there is no need for formalities.”_ _

__“I ‘m Arthur. So that was what it was all about?” he asked immediately. “Finding who is lying about me in the French literary societies? Probably everyone. Being my friend has no benefits unless you are a radical yourself, which no one is. I don’t have time for gossip.”_ _

__“You drank that whole bottle didn’t you?” I asked. “So I think you can give me some of your time,” I added._ _

__He laughed. “I will be asking to be paid in gin and other drinks from now on. Death from a wasted liver, INTENSE!”_ _

__I asked for two of the cheap whiskey. The waiter came quickly. Arthur grabbed the bottle and I told the waiter to leave it on the table._ _

__“What am I being paid for now?” Arthur asked._ _

__“Now that we are honest between us and I know all of this,” I began, “I want to ask you and receive an honest answer,” I said. “About the scar.”_ _

__He rolled up his sleeve. The deep scar had left white traces on his skin, white lines running up his wrist until the middle, where a white mark glowed angrily in the low light. In the middle, the skin was cut and sewn again. He put his thumb over it, pressing down onto the scar. His face contorted into a grimace of pain, I could see him getting joy from this, trying to test himself in front of me prove that he was the bigger man here._ _

__“Hurts,” he said. “Of course. He shot me twice.”_ _

__“How did it happen?”_ _

__“It's a long story.”_ _

__“We have time,” I said. “And a bottle.”_ _

__“We need way more than that,” he said. “If you want me to tell you the whole story.”_ _

__I served each of us a glass of the yellow liquid one could not call whiskey and he drank it immediately, he was already pouring another glass for himself when I took my first sip. It burned my throat. I understood that he needed some kind of a barrier, to blur his mind before talking. He sipped the second one slowly since he got his kick from the first._ _

__“First the absinthe, then that name, I should have known that someone did his homework,” Arthur commented. “But you are still so unprepared.”_ _

__“About what I am about to hear?”_ _

__“What do you expect? Find out the truth- and for what? I let them believe what they want to believe.”_ _

__“You like to be seen as that,” I said. “As that rebellious non-human idea.”_ _

__“People like to see me like that. I let them see their hopes embodied,” he said. “Nobody dares to live their life the way they want to. They need someone to throw a rock at their still waters.”_ _

__“So you did this all out of boredom?”_ _

__“I was so delusional I thought I could go to Paris and everybody would drop at my feet, naming me their king,” he said. “As they should have,” he added with a little smile._ _

__“They would rather shoot you instead?” He did not answer. He drank a little more. “I suppose,” he said. Silence fell between us. I watched him turning the glass around on his hand._ _

__“Do you have siblings?” I asked._ _

__He nodded positively. “Two sisters. Vitalie, I don’t know where she is, and Isabelle. She is still there with my mother, such a sweetheart, cares for all these people.”_ _

__“Is she proud of you?”_ _

__“Yes she is, why shouldn’t she be, I am the most renowned, exiled, sodomist, communard, bastard of a brother ever existed.”_ _

__“That is a lot of adjectives in a row for one person.”_ _

__“You don’t know the whole story yet,” he said. “Obviously, there are a lot more.”_ _

__“Where is Isabelle?”_ _

__“In Charleville. The town I grew up in. Takes care of our mother, I send her some money whenever I can.”_ _

__“Why didn’t you stay in the town?” I asked. He looked at me. “Well that is the point of this whole thing,” he said, waving his finger around in the air as if I was supposed to understand something bigger, the story all around us. “I need my time to tell it all.”_ _

__I leaned forward. I gave him time to speak._ _


	3. A young man in the countryside has many reasons to want to leave

He sipped one more time. He held his glass between his fingers concentrating his gaze on the amber glow of the liquid inside. 

“Charleville is a small town in the region of Ardennes,” he said after some moments of silence. His voice was suddenly much deeper. His shoulders raised slightly. “A cute pastoral town with cows in the fields, farmers, little shops, a bakery, boring people who have no desire other than to eat and sleep and drink to oblivion every single afternoon. Churches, a few. Catholics who would shame you for putting a hand down your pants. You can imagine why a young man would want to leave.”

“What did your parents say about that?”

“They had their opinions. My mother was a tough woman, very proud, very strict, very difficult. My father fought in the war.”

“Which war?”

“It drove him mad.” He said ignoring me. “Unable to speak he just drank, until someday he just vanished. Mother never married again. I doubt she wanted to. I thought she was proud to call herself the Widow Rimbaud,” he said, making a mocking sound of the last words. “Even though he lived, I think, he was somewhere in the region, she was the Widow of a soldier and that was it for her. I was never that proud. I did not understand why we had to live like that, well, I did, but at the same time I was mad, I was mad at the country for letting us exist like this. All these wars we could not win and even if we did there were so many losses, it would have been better for us not to have won at all.” he said. “When the war with Prussia began, mother was afraid they’d take me as well.” 

“How come they didn’t?” 

“I was too young.” He said. “I would go if they did.” 

“All these bloody wars,” he said after a while. “That aftermath, flags and soldiers and weapons. They left the dead in the town, in the hospitals, you could see so many of them wounded and poor, missing arms and legs and they died shortly after because the shock was too much.”

“I have never seen anything like that,” I said, although I was not sure. I always heard something about riots in other neighbourhoods, against the government, against the English but I was lucky enough to stay out of it. 

“I have,” he said. 

I asked him what he had seen.

“I was walking through a field and I saw a man lying on the grass, leaning onto a log. I thought he was sleeping and that it would be fun to play a trick on him or something, then I got closer and he was….” he said, interrupted for a sip of whiskey and continued in a normal voice. “dead. He was shot. I kept dreaming about him for some time after that. These are images that stay with you, you know.” He said. “I thought it was somehow poetic. The tragic irony of nature and luck, it was in my head for a long time, then I started to write it down and it all flowed away,” he said. “I think I gave him some peace.”

He was not really as descriptive as he was in the book. I tried to ask something again, just to keep the conversation going. 

“Had you started writing poems then?”

“I wrote them in my mind. Those verses that seemed important.” 

He fell silent again. I thought it was the end of the night. I thought this was the only thing I could ever get. What a waste of chance, I thought.

“When I was twelve, I believe, I ran away for the first time.” he suddenly added. “I did it again when I was sixteen, I tried to board a train but had no ticket, I was caught and we paid a fine, my mother had to borrow money from people to pay it. I did that a couple more times after that so that mother once sent the police to get me home!” he laughed.  
“Where did you want to go?”

“To Paris,” he said. “I thought there would be better things for me somewhere far away, if I managed to escape the fate of being stuck there, which was certain, being the only man of the immediate family. Cattle and fields require someone who cares about it, I did not. I wanted to have time for myself, to write, to think. All of the work required so many hours of our day, I did not care about that. I always found ways to slip off work but mother found out.” he said. “It was a place where you knew what was going to happen at every instance, seeing the same things over and over again. It was no place to gain some experiences in life,” he said. 

I knew how that felt. Sometimes the island seemed too small even for me. I did not know what to ask after that, so I let the silence take over for a minute. 

“Have you known Verlaine then?” I asked.

“Stop!” he said, looking at me fiercely, it was the first time I saw someone with a face so determined. “Let me say,” he muttered, drawing a small breath in, “what I want to say. I will speak when I want to speak and I'll tell you what I want to tell you,” he said. 

I stayed in my chair, something holding me down, strapped and bolted in place.

“This is the deal,” he said and I accepted it.

He relighted his pipe which had gone out a while ago. I ordered another bottle just in case. I watched him smoking. His brows furrowed, making a long defined brown line over his eyes. 

“I guess he is back in France now. Probably expanding his poems of love along with his piety.” He mumbled. “ You know, we used to play with words. I coined him a name for himself at some point -Pauvre Lelian, because he always whined a little too much. He was always second in line, never dared to be first. Always looking for a God to grab from. Me, his wife, the Church. Poetry.” He added. “Fuck poetry.” He said softly. 

I let him take his time. I looked at his bright eyes, now turning red. He pointed the narrow end of the pipe towards me. “Now I speak. I am the voice!” he said. I accepted his authority over the tale, after all, it belonged to him. I sat there, on the straw chair, silent, waiting for him to collect himself before we continue. 

I had realized by now that any mention of Verlaine was still a rocky terrain for him. But I knew, we were bound to get there, sooner or later, one way or another, our story would cross that terrain of uncomfortable truth. Arthur turned his sleeves up, I could imagine, behind his furrowed brows, the little gears of his mind engine turning, figuring out ways to make this story more captivating, more exciting for me, the reader of his imaginary autobiography.

As he spoke, his voice started to regain some stability. He liked talking, almost as much as he liked to decorate his speech here and there with scholarly words I did not understand. 

“A fine is a defined amount of money you pay to the government for breaking the rules and being free whenever you decide to be. I knew that I had to pay it of course so I did not speak, pretending to be a good Christian boy, I was afraid that it would only take on If I made any smart remarks. I had written to my mother and our good friend, the teacher I had in the town. He was the one who loaned the money to my mother so she could pay the fine. I stayed in prison for some days, it was not too many, but they were so upset about it. On the way home, mother was so angry I could hold her nose and she’d burst.” he said with a laugh. “Isabelle loved that shenanigan, but I would not dare take her with me, besides she was not fit for this kind of adventure. Mother hated me; if it was on her, I think she would have let me in prison to teach me a lesson, of course, that teacher was very convincing for the opposite. After the second time, she realized, I hate the place. She decided that I would be better off closed inside some Catholic school. A huge expense for the family. But the man convinced her I would take a lesson in discipline and I would be benefited from it.” 

“Catholic school?”

“Priests teach you things and you are confined somewhere." he said “I hated it. Imagine being surrounded by some young cretins all the time, being there only because of their money, they had nothing in their heads but pure straw. Though one could find, some people who were kind of smart to keep a good conversation with. And finally, I had all the books I desired. The only thing keeping me afloat at this hell was the library, I can not remember how many hours I wasted there.” he said. “It was there that I got the idea.”

“What idea?”

"The poetry idea." he snickered. "We were studying a lot of Latin. It was remarkable what one could learn from some dead, Roman men with strange names. Seneca, and Racena; all of these important ones, whom Rome deemed important. I maintained contact with Mr Izambard and he sent me books from time to time. It was the perfect environment for creation.” 

"And so you did."

"And so I did..." he said bitterly.


	4. Inciting Rebellion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Arthur takes the lead to tell his side of the story as he knows best

The old priest lowered his glasses. The two boys stood in front of him, shoes muddy, hair dishevelled, eyes glinting with mischief. At moments they exchanged looks and laughed under their breaths.  
“Earnest Delahaye, I am not surprised,” he said with a scowl. “And Arthur Rimbaud, of course. You do realize that your parents are working very hard to keep you here.”

“Chained.” Added Earnest. I was the other boy. I very much agreed with Earnest, at least for my case. I did not think Ernest had any desire in particular to leave Charleville, he just wanted to make a fuss, just for the sake of it. 

The priest did not appreciate the comment. “I will have you know Mr Delahaye, that your father is just as disappointed at your progress as I am. You should take an example from-, well preferably from another student then this man here,” he said pointing at me with the ruler. “As for you Mr Rimbaud, the only reason I have not kicked you out of this school yet is your grades. Therefore, I suggest you keep them up; because if I see even one remark, I will have you earn it back by mopping every floor in this school!” he said. 

I did not answer. That man was beneath me since I had started correcting him in class. He did not know what he was talking about. 

“May I ask now,” he continued scolding us, “Where the devil have you been?”

“In the town square,” I said. “Where you found us”

“Rimbaud, do you expect me to believe that?” 

I did not answer. I expected the ruler to slap me. I kind of liked the feeling, this sharp stinging pain it left where it landed. I liked showing off to the other students, especially to Earnest.   
He was a little more reasonable. 

“We were at the concourse in the town hall,” he revealed. The priest gave me a stern look. He knew. I had started getting the political sense of things just now and I constantly said that I had figured out my calling. It may have reached some more ears than I had expected.

“You can not let yourself be branded.” He said softly but strictly. “This is a respectable school. I do not want to be found in a position where I have to explain how my students became socialists. However much you believe in that movement.” he added still looking at me. “Despite that, I have to let you go away with this one,” he said. “As of tomorrow school is closing and it is going to remain closed until further notice from the Minister of Defense.”

I felt my stomach turn. So it was true. The war had finally reached us. I said nothing and followed Ernest out of the door. When we found ourselves in the hallway, we started running immediately away, anxious to get out of there, into the sun. I jumped high to touch the low hanging frame board of the outer door as we crossed it to get to the schoolyard, where we stopped, out of breath, the former tension being dispelled as soon as we got outside. 

“I ‘ll stop you, little socialist, I will have you scrubbing floors!” I mocked the priest and Earnest doubled over, laughing. “I bet you, the old bastard would like to see me on all fours.”

“Well, wouldn’t he? I mean, I would,” said Ernest. “As well as that teacher fellow of yours, I think.”

“Mr Izambard is a friend of my family, he knows us all,” I answered. “He helps, so I can study here.”

“Well, for a stellar student like you, who is honouring his mother's money, you are spending a lot of time in other activities!” he said playfully. “First, escapades in the middle of the night in the woods, now socialist gatherings. And all that poetry reading in the library,” he said as we walked towards the kitchen to get some food.

“I told you, I am not made to be a scholar. I am leaving.” 

Earnest stopped and looked at me. “You are saying that?” he said, his voice going dangerously higher. “The same person who won first prize for translating and writing poetry in LATIN! You are saying that? I should go hang myself then.” he concluded. “And what exactly do you plan on doing?” he asked. “Live in the penitentiary?”

“Nothing. I will perfect the art of doing nothing. I am going to leave this town and be a writer because that is exactly what I should do with my life.” I said. “You know- Villon; that life I want to live. Vagabond, free, roaming the earth, travelling, sleeping wherever. I want to live without law and home, I want to see things and write about them, I want to travel to distant lands! What about the Americas? Or Guinea?”

“The Gods have written upon my brow,” Ernest started, it was his turn to mock me. “That I am a silly, romantic, daydreamer.” he chirped. “Also, my enlightened little calf, Villon lived in the 15th century,” he said and he picked up his pace so we could get something for lunch after all. 

“You do not understand and I did not expect you to,” I said. “All the many times I told you of something great, you decided to look at your shoes instead.”

“So, who does? That man to whom you sent that weird “Letter of the Prophet” manuscript and never answered back? Twice?”

“He does not get it because he is of the bourgeoisie.” I answered. “and they are snobbish idiots who do not accept that I have much more talent than them.”

“Hmm, learning big words and spitting them in and out of verse I see. You have obviously much more confidence than they do.” said Ernest “And smaller balls.” he added, for which I promptly punched him on the arm. “It is true!” he said rubbing the spot I touched him. “Ever since you got turned down for the second time, you have not done anything. Have you written to someone else? No!”

“I don’t know anyone,” I said in haste. 

“Liar.” laughed Earnest. “You know everyone who is writing right now, I saw you looking in the library and the papers. You know, and you know who you can ask for advice. You are just a frightened chicken.”

“I am not a chicken!” I said. “As for your evaluation of my art, thank you, you are very kind and generous, considering the fact that you have not read a single line of it!”

“You don’t let me read it. You don’t let anyone else read it.”

“I want to find my voice first,” I said. I would have plenty of time now that the school was closed. I had no intention of going back. “I just don't know anyone skilful enough,” I said after we sat in the long wooden dining table, each one with a bowl of soup in front of us. “Someone that I appreciate enough.”

“Ask Izambard, write to him,” said Ernest. “Look, I don’t care. I just don’t want you to give up, I know you love that.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes, you’re welcome, are you going to eat that?” he said and before I answered, he grabbed my bowl, which I had no intention of finishing anyway. Hunger in the rural areas was a kind of constant variable, fortunately for Ernest, I was a man of low maintenance.

***  
I sat silent, listening to his narration. I laughed with how he interpreted and mimicked the other student and the priest. He flashed small smiles talking about them, it made him look even younger than he was. At other times he would shy away from the memories and thoughts, leaning his head downwards, crossing his arms.

“Do you still write to him?” I asked 

“We drifted apart. Like old classmates do,” Arthur said. 

***

The following days the school closed. I spent most of my days in the library and at the barn, writing and reading hidden in the hay bales.

We had to let the war pass. I kept devouring the news from Paris whenever they came.   
I supported the Communes efforts, despite my mother's opinions. The battles raged, on and on, all around us. Inside Paris, the French had made it a personal mission to defend the city from the Germans. Calls for volunteers were shared, to serve in the hospitals and the barracks. I answered the call along with some others the same age as me. 

We were transported to Paris and positioned in a suburban area. We worked hours on end, storing food, preparing materials. Every time I heard cannons my heart jumped. War is no place for games. After some weeks they told us that we would be sent back to our homes. I wanted to stay in Paris, but we were ordered to leave nothing behind, not even our scent, so we returned to Ardennes. I came home. I hugged my mother and sisters, so tightly I could never forget it.

After the war, the Commune was established as a government In Paris. I was delighted. I saw my dreams of achieving solidarity among all and socialistic principles being materialized and I dreamed of better days ahead. The whole victory gave me an incentive to look for Izambard. I told him my endeavours had given me nothing. He decided to give me another piece of advice.

“I know a person, the Commune has hired him as a representative of the press. I advise that you send him something to read,” he said. “His name is Paul Verlaine.”

I held on the name as tightly as I could. I placed all my hopes on this man's answer alone.

“Don’t do it right now,” he warned me. Things were still unstable politically and the prospects of another clash were extremely high. Some time later he was proven right. The leaders of the Commune were shot. Clashes began, tearing Paris apart. 

They fought for power. It was a different war. We were divided. Socialism against Nationalism, brother against brother, sister against sister. Bloodshed. 

When it ended, the commune was no longer in power. Instead a new government had manifested. All was peaceful again.

Members of the Commune were tried and executed for inciting riots. Others lost their jobs. Others were banished, mostly women, who were deemed not worthy of the death penalty. I found it cruel and unfair, I wanted to go to Paris even more now, to fight to restore this judgment somehow. I believed that Socialists had good inside them, had much to give to the world, good things, rights and respect to people of the working class, I saw myself as some kind of angel that would become their voice.

I am going to write to him!” I said. “I am going to and I will get an answer, I know I will.”

“Is he any good?” asked Ernest.

“He knows how to write, for one. And he will probably know how to teach me too.” I said. “Besides, I have nowhere else to turn to.” 

I did not have the heart to tell him that I maybe had an ulterior motive in targeting this specific man that did not have that much to do with the writing on its own.

“Coming back to school to get your diploma perhaps?”

“You get your bloody diploma then shove it in your arse, to see how far gets,” I said and Earnest laughed, never failing to see the humour in this way of speaking.

“Do you even have a poem to send him?” he asked.

“As a matter of fact I do,” I said. I had copied it this morning, in perfect letters, on newly bought paper which I held proudly in my hand. Earnest leaned and grabbed it so forcefully that I was afraid he would rip it off.

“The Sleeper in the Valley.” he read the title. “Good, will you tell him that you are also leaving school?”

“NO!” I said, grabbing my poem back. “I am telling him that I am twenty. Otherwise, he will never take me seriously.”

It was the beginning of summer when wrote the letter. It was time for poetry again. I waited and waited and waited, days, then weeks finally, around the end of August, a letter arrived for me, from Paris.   
I had been expecting it, devoting every waking hour of my day to it, I have been standing on the edge, as every time I sent out a letter waiting for the answer.   
I could not read it out of nervousness, my hands trembling and sweaty could not hold the envelope in place to open it, but when I read the letter, it all came to be still because it was the best thing I had ever hoped for. I rushed through the letter and the number of positive phrases made me almost faint like a little girl wearing a tight bodice in the heat.   
In his words, it was well structured and magnificent, and I was “a man with potential” and “a rare talent.” 

Upon reading it I knew that I was given the justice I longed for. Finally, someone had admitted that my work was worthy.

He believed in me. He was the first person that I held to some standard to ever believe in me. 

I thought that I held God in my hand.


End file.
